Little Secrets
by MedicOnDuty
Summary: Colonel Lard is doing his best to deprive the Black Sheep of even the most needed parts to repair their aircraft, so chief mechanic Andy Miklin agrees to head over to Espritos Marcos with a box of the Black Sheep's best booze to wheel and deal with the supply sergeant. When Miklin returns with the parts, however, weird things start happening on Vella La Cava.


Little Secrets

22 September 1943

The gray and white C-47 slowly rolled down the back half of the runway, then swung around to its right and came to a stop in front of the row of Corsair aircraft parked neatly in front of the maintenance shacks on the far end of Vella La Cava's Airfield. Once the props had come to a full stop, the side door opened to let crew and passengers exit. This was the weekly supply plane that brought basic necessities every Wednesday, such as boxes of canned foods and toiletries, like the ever-sought-after soap and toilet paper, and occasionally even some aircraft parts.

Those aircraft parts in particular had been scarce in their part of the South Pacific - to be more specific, on their particular little island - even since the Black Sheep had moved onto Vella La Cava, taking the base and aircraft from the previous owners of the designation VMF-214. Colonel Lard, who oversaw the approval of military supplies coming and going from Espritos Marcos, had made it his personal mission to see Boyington's Black Sheep disappear from the Pacific, and what better way to accomplish his mission than to deny them necessary parts needed to keep their planes flying. If the Black Sheep could not fly, they could not exist. Of course, he wasn't always successful at blocking their supply requests since Boyington enjoyed the support of General Moore and, along with it, a great deal of protection. If Moore caught Colonel Lard denying supplies to Boyington, Lard was in trouble and supplies were shipped no matter what he tried to keep them on Espritos. But even when General Moore was out of the picture, as he'd been the past two week (he'd been at Pearl Harbor for a staff officer's conference and Lard was left in charge), the Black Sheep still had many ways of getting the supplies they needed, much to Lard's chagrin.

This particular week, their means of getting the supplies they needed was called Master Sergant Andy Micklin, the Black Sheep's chief mechanic. Although Micklin couldn't stand the "college boys" who kept bringing his aircraft - and make no mistake, those Corsairs all belonged to him! - back to the island riddled with bullet holes and all sorts of other damage and malfunctions, there was one thing that he hated a whole lot more: officers like Colonel Lard who kept from him the supplies he needed to fix those planes. It was because of this, and because of the fact that the Black Sheep pilots were too well recognized on Espritos to get away with it, that Micklin had grudgingly agreed to head to Espritos Marcos on the Monday afternoon mail flight to see what he could do in regards to getting those aircraft parts.

Micklin had left Vella La Cava early on Monday afternoon wearing his cleanest (and only) set of khakis, which felt stiff and uncomfortable to a man who spent most days in nothing but his fatigue pants and skivvy shirt, carrying an empty khaki duffle bag stencilled with his name and large, square, wooden box with sturdy rope handles that resembled a large ammunition crate. It was this box that the Black Sheep hoped would be their ticket to the supplies they needed: inside, packed carefully between dried grass and sand from the beach were stacked bottles of the finest watered-down Scotch this side of Australia that the Black Sheep had gotten in trade from some Seabees, who in turn had gotten it in a poker game from some sailors, who'd gotten it from God-knows-where. Along the way, some of it had been watered down and repackaged, but it still was as good as any currency around the Solomons. This was how the real supply chain worked in the South Pacific - at least for the Black Sheep who frequently had to beg, borrow, and steal what they needed. Now this particular part of the supply chain headed to Espritos Marcos, where it would be gratefully acknowledged by a supply sergeant (off the books, of course), who'd exchange it for a set of equally off-the-books aircraft parts that happened to be needed on Vella La Cava.

Two days later, on Wednesday afternoon, Micklin returned to Vella on the supply flight, sitting uncomfortably in one narrow seat on the bench that ran the length of the aircraft, resting his feet on one of the many boxes strapped down in the center of the plane. Boxes of canned Spam, toiletries, and other goods surrounded him, and his own supplies, the wooden box he'd brought from Vella and the duffle bag, were pushing up against him on the bench as there was nowhere else to put him. On his lap, he balanced a small brown cardboard box tied with a length of twine, like a parcel from home. It was a bumpy ride, with gusty winds, and Micklin, who wasn't a great fan of flying, figured that this must be what it feels like to be a sardine ... in a tin being playfully kicked down the street by a group of kids. He was glad to feel the aircraft come to a full stop and hear the engines shut off when they arrived at Vella La Cava.

Micklin slung the duffle bag over his shoulder, perched his small cardboard box carefully on top of his wooden crate, and, carrying the crate by its handles, carefully began making his way to the door and sideways down the steps of the C-47 onto solid ground. He was taking a great deal of care to keep the small box from sliding off the larger box, and began making his way toward the maintenance shacks lined up behind the row of Corsairs, where all of their current supplies and tools were kept, when Boyington, wearing his flight suit, walked toward him.

"Did you have any luck getting the supplies?" Greg asked.

"It look like I'm carryin' empty boxes?" Micklin snapped, heaving the heavy wooden box along the space between Gutterman's and Boyle's aircraft. He'd used up his entire monthly store of polite conversation for the annoying supply sergeant and assorted much more annoying officers on Espritos Marcos and he wasn't going to go to great lengths to work up any more politeness for this bunch of college boys. Even if they wore Major's rank and were in charge of the outfit.

Greg only barely kept from rolling his eyes at Micklin. He wasn't the eye-rolling type, but good ol' Micklin sure had him close to rolling them right out of his head with the way he talked. Well, as long as he kept their birds flying ... and in all honesty, Greg could dish it out every bit as well as his mechanic could. "Good," he said in response. "Then you won't mind getting to T.J.'s bird pretty soon. He's having issues again."

"You don't say," Micklin responded without stopping. T.J. _always _had issues with his aircraft - and would have, until he figured out the right mixture of fuel and oil and stopped gunking up his engine. Maybe they'd be able to order less engine parts if someone taught that college boy how to fly one of those Corsairs properly. That's not even mentioning the times he's gotten himself shot up when they've ran into Japanese fighters while on patrol, or the times he's ran his bird off the runway on landing or takeoff. Why that boy was still flying was anyone's guess, Micklin figured. However, before he could retort further or before Pappy could press him any further about what parts he'd been able to wrangle from Espritos Marcos (and when he'd get around to installing them), a very curious thing happened. Micklin's small cardboard parcel unmistakably said, "MEOW."

Pappy raised an eyebrow and was about to say something when Micklin cleared his throat and said, "Unless you're gonna help fix these here birds, get off my back!" and stepped away swiftly, carrying his boxes. Pappy found this very strange indeed but he knew better than to press his chief mechanic for more information, unless he wanted to wind up underneath that very heavy box of aircraft parts, so he chose to head the other way and leave Micklin to his own devices.

...

23 September 1943

It was very early that Thursday morning when Meatball, Greg's white Bullterrier (and the squadron's Mascot), let out a fearsome growl, causing Hutch, who'd come running into Pappy's tent in a panic, to back slowly toward the tent's entrance from where he had come. This commotion woke Greg, who'd been sleeping off the quarter bottle of Scotch he had finished with his executive officer, Jim Gutterman, the previous evening while going over their flight plans and duty rosters for the next few days.

"Shut up," Greg told the dog sleepily and sluggishly sat up, noticing Hutch's faint outline standing at the entrance to his tent, silhouetted by the faint light of the waning moon that hung high in the clear black night sky. It took a second for Greg to be awake enough to reach some form of being coherent, so he swung his feet over the side of the cot, putting them down onto the cool, packed-dirt floor, rubbed his eyes with his fingers, and looked back at Hutch, who hadn't moved. "Hutch? What in God's name is the matter? Its..." He groped for his wrist watch on top of the wooden night stant built from palettes (as was most of their furniture), which stood next to the hed of his cot and held some of his clothing, a couple of books, and assorted other items. He stared at the luminous dial for a second. "Hutch, it's two-thirty in the morning."

Hutch swallowed. He seemed out of breath and unusually nervous, which was quite out of character for him. "Pappy, you know I wouldn't wake you if it wasn't important, but there's something you'd better come and check out. I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but you better wake everyone up. I think maybe we've got the Japanese on Vella again!"

"How do you figure that?"

"The flight line sentry just woke me. He said he'd heard a bunch of crashing around in the maintenance area and thought maybe someone was out there sabotaging our supplies. So I thought maybe we've got another invasion or ... something." Hutch looked nervously around as if he expected the Japanese Army to walk up on them at any second. "He didn't see nothing but he said he heard a whole bunch of noise. He's still out there."

Greg had reached for his socks and boondockers and pulled them on quickly. Then, grabbing the shoulder holster with his 1911 pistol, which hung from a hook on his tent's center beam, he headed toward Hutch. "Let me talk to this sentry first, see what he has to say," he said. "Your mind can play tricks on you when you're out there on duty by yourself, staring into the dark all night. If you stare hard enough, you'll see a Jap soldier behind every bush." Hutch nodded uneasily and followed him back toward the line of Corsairs at the far end of the airfield where the maintenance area lay beyond the mechanics' and ground crew's tents.

"You're probably right," Hutch said. "Maybe the wind just knocked some stuff over or something."

After a brief, quick walk, they came up to the Corsairs and found the sentry half-crouched underneath the wing of the third aircraft in the row, which was Anderson's bird, staring at the maintenance shed that lay in the shadows of two large palm trees about three plane lenghts away. When Greg asked him to recount what had happened, the Marine explained he'd been walking along the row of Corsairs, keeping an eye out across the runway in front of them, when he'd heard a series of crashes from the maintenance shack behind him, which they were now all staring at. This was the same one where Micklin had stored their new aircraft parts in earlier that day. He had found this crashing around very suspicious, but doubted that there was much he could do by himself if it was indeed a saboteur or, worse yet, the entire Japanese Army, so he'd gone to the nearest mechanics' tent, which was Hutch's, and told him to raise the alarm. He seemed annoyed that Hutch had returned with only one person - the squadron commander, no less - and that this commander was now questioning him about, apparently, both his aptitude for sentry duty and his intelligence.

"But you didn't actually see anyone?" Greg asked. When the sentry shook his head, he sighed. "Alright, why don't we go and take a look before we wake everyone up. Who knows - maybe my dog's gotten into Hutch's secret stockpile of Spam," he grinned with an attempt at humor, but the two men with him looked nothing short of horrified. They obviously didn't think that being invaded was a laughing matter, even though there was - at least in Greg's opinion - absolutely nothing that suggested foul play. "Let me have the flashlight, I'll go look," he offered. The sentry handed him a black Navy-issue flashlight and helpfully stood back while Greg walked toward the maintenance shed, pistol in his right hand and flashlight in his left, Hutch nervously bobbing along in his wake, unarmed.

"What in the hell is going on out here!"

Micklin's voice cut through the silence, even though he wasn't yelling, and took all of them by surprise. Greg swung around in the direction it had come from and wound up shining the flashlight right into Micklin's face, finding with a start that his chief mechanic was only steps away from him and wearing nothing but his skivvies and dog tags. Micklin grabbed the flashlight and pushed Greg's hand down. "Get that outta my face," he growled. "And what in the hell!" He gestured at Hutch and the sentry. "What're you sneaking around my maintenance sheds for, in the middle of the night!"

Hutch opened his mouth, then looked to Greg, then back to Micklin, waiting for Greg to offer an explanation. Greg wrested the flashlight free of Micklin's large hand and shone the light onto the maintenance shed closest to him. "Our sentry reported some noises out here and sent Hutch to wake me up to make sure we weren't being invaded." He found that this sounded very stupid, even though they _had been _invaded before and caught by surprise. Micklin also thought it sounded stupid, apparently, because he made a noise that was somewhere between a disgusted snort and laughter. "And then three of you are gonna stop the Jap army, I s'ppose?"

Micklin grabbed the flashlight from Pappy and strode forward to the maintenance shed, which was a sort of rectangular-shaped canvas enclosure reminiscent of an awning, underneath which boxes of supplies, tool chests, barrels with cleaning solvent, and other maintenance items were stored to keep them out of the sun and, if it was raining, the rain. He spent some time shining the light into assorted spaces around boxes and barrels. "Well, here's your Jap army," he said, gesturing toward three spare propeller blades, which had been knocked over and fallen onto a tool chest perched atop a wooden crate, which in turn had toppled over and spilled its contents of wrenches, ratchets, and screwdrivers onto the ground. "A Jap tool chest."

Greg glared at Hutch and the sentry, both of whom gave him sheepish looks.

"In that case," he said, "I'm going back to bed." As he walked away to the pilots' side of the camp, he heard Micklin yell at Hutch to either get his butt back to bed or to get dressed and start working on picking up the mess in the maintenance shed, and at the sentry to get lost and stop making a racket. Greg assumed everyone quickly went their way as they'd been told, but he wasn't about to go back and check. Micklin wasn't the most pleasant of people on an average day, but he certainly wasn't any more pleasant after being woken from a sound sleep in the middle of the night.

...

Surprisingly, Greg did manage to get right back to sleep after he'd returned to his tent, and he would have likely enjoyed sleeping right until reville (or even a bit past that), had he not been rudely awoken yet again, this time by Micklin storming into his tent. "You get that damn dog of yours _right now_!" Micklin hollered, ripping Greg right out of the middle of a particularly good dream about that new nurse stationed at the hospital on the other side of the island. He jumped up and very nearly fell off his cot, trying to gain his bearings, disoriented and with his heart hammering in his chest. He blinked, hanging on to the cot, trying to focus his eyes on the person standing right in front of him.

"Micklin!" he slurred, his tongue feeling dry and heavy just like his eyes which didn't feel like they wanted to stay open quite yet.

"Yeah, Micklin," Micklin responded. "Now go get your mutt!"

Pappy tried to shake the sleep from his head, looking very much like a dog trying to get water out of its ear, while he attempted to make sense of this conversation he was apparently having with his chief mechanic as an orange sliver of light began falling into the tent, heralding a very early sunrise over Vella La Cava. A conversation he was having with his chief mechanic about his dog. _Wait. What? His dog? Where was Meatball, anyway? _Usually, Meatball's chubby white body was splayed out on a spare wool blanket Greg kept underneath his cot for the dog, or he was curling himself into a ball between Greg's feet at the end of the cot.

"Meatball?" Greg still tried to blink the sleep from his eyes and make sense of the situation. Micklin began to tap his foot in irritation. When Greg made no attempt at standing up or taking any sort of action that didn't involve falling asleep sitting right on the edge of his cot, Micklin was irritated enough to step forward, grab Greg by the front of the T-shirt, stand up him, and begin walking him toward the outside before Greg had any kind of ability to realize what was going on. By the time they'd walked all the way past the ground crew's tents and to the mechanics' tents near the flight line, Greg in his bare feet and his skivvies, he began to wake up enough to become coherent. He pulled himself from Micklin's grip.

"This better be good," he protested.

"Oh, it's good alright," Micklin snarled. "That damn dog of yours has my..." He paused. "He's in my tent causing trouble, anyway. Knocking stuff over, waking me up!"

Greg looked taken aback. This really didn't sound like the kind of behavior he was used from Meatball, who was usually the kind of dog you had to step over because he couldn't be bothered to get out of the way. Sure, Meatball could be a pest when he was begging for food in the chow hall and it could be quite annoying when he took up three quarters of your cot with his legs all splayed out, but he was generally a lovable little dog who, being the only dog on the base and the squadron's mascot, usually enjoyed everyone's attention. It seemed pretty unlikely that he'd suddenly turned into the four-legged terror of the South Pacific, wreaking havoc in other peoples' tents.

Greg yawned as he followed Micklin into his tents. "You didn't pick up any fresh sausages from Espritos while you were getting our supplies, did you? I'm not responsible for Meatball's behavior if you're hiding a secret stash of food from the rest of us."

Micklin frowned at this attempt at humor and led Greg into his tent, which looked a little bit like a bomb had exploded - or at least a relatively small hand grenade. Some of the shipping pallet furniture lay knocked over, anything that had been on or in it, scattered on the ground. Meatball's white form was sitting almost in the center of the tent, a little to the side of the main wooden support pole, between a turned-over shelf and the canvas duffle bag sticking out from beneath Micklin's cot, staring intently into the dark area underneath the cot, growling.

"Meatball!" Greg ordered. The dog flicked his right ear, the one that had a black spot on it, backwards toward his master and inched forward into the space between the book case and the duffle bag. Greg didn't know what had gotten into his dog. Sure, Meatball didn't always listen (actually, he generally didn't listen unless it involved food), but this seemed very out of character. The only time Meatball had ever behaved aggressively - growling at someone - had been when Greg had been faced with rude officers who didn't believe in keeping dogs. He doubted very much that Micklin had any sort of officer underneath his cot, however.

"See!" Micklin said. "Now get 'im away from there."

Greg stepped forward to reach for Meatball's chain collar in order to physically pull him away since his dog had obviously chosen to ignore him completely, but at the same time he stepped toward his dog, Meatball pushed his way underneath the cot, wedged between the legs of the cot and the duffle bag, and just out of reach of Greg's hand, which was reaching for the collar. Then, as suddenly as he'd pushed forward, he flinched back with a loud, piercing yelp, slammed his rear-end painfully into Greg's shins, spun around, and ran from the tent with his tail tucked.

Micklin chuckled and Greg rubbed his sore shins. "Damn dog," he cursed. At the same time, however, he was very interested in what was underneath this cot that could make his dog act like that - he'd never seen that behavior before. Maybe some sort of jungle animal had gotten loose in the camp. The only dangerous animal he could think of was a snake, but he also knew that the only venomous snakes found in the Solomons were a species of sea snake that rarely came on land and that were generally considered to be docile and not aggressive. Greg got down onto his knees and moved foeward to investigate the space beneath Micklin's cot, ignoring the mechanic's "Hang on a minute!" behind him. At first, he didn't see anything at all in the shadows underneath the cot. Then he saw two circles, approximately the size of pennies, shining back at him in the morning light now creeping into the tent as the sun was rising higher above the horizon. He stuck his hand forward to reach for whatever kind of creature this was - and then quickly pulled it back with a yelp of "OW!", revealing four long but very shallow scratches across the top of his hand. He looked at it, then at Micklin, as he sat back onto his heels. "Alright, Micklin, time to come clean."

"Well," Micklin said. This may well have been the first time he'd been speechless in front of anyone, let alone an officer. Greg wondered whether he needed to mark this day on the calendar, in the squadron's war diaries, or both. Miklin took a deep breath. "Well, you're scaring him," he said. He pushed Greg out of the way, got down on his knees, and reached one of his very large hands underneath the cot where he grasped around for a frew sedonds, then bringing his hand back out. In it, he was carefully holding an small orange tabby kitten, barely the size of his palm, scruffed by the neck, the kitten's paws tucked in and its tail still puffed in resemblance of a pipe cleaner after its encounter with both Meatball and Greg. Micklin placed the kitten in his other hand and looked embarrassed.

"That's a cat," Greg broke into a grin. "Let me guess ... that's also our invading Jap army in the maintenance shed?"

Micklin flushed and Greg sincerely hoped that he wasn't about to get punched. When Micklin's face turned red, it was usually not a good sign. Instead, Micklin swallowed and said, "He got away from me last night."

Greg broke into laughter and walked out of the tent before Miklin could change his mind about punching him. The image of the very large - and often very scary - Master Sergeant holding a tiny orange kitten close to his chest with the utmost care was still in his head as he walked back to his tent to care for his own scratched hand and (what turned out to be) Meatball's equally scratched nose. Well, hell, if Miklin wanted a kitten, he didn't have to sneak it onto the island. But Greg had to admit that the image of Miklin, of all people, with a tiny little kitten was more than just a little humorous.


End file.
